Man Denies Shooting Officer in '69 Riot

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, March 10, 2003

A black man accused of killing a white police officer during the city's 1969 race riots testified Tuesday that he was unarmed and trying to duck a barrage of shots that felled the rookie patrolman.

Stephen Freeland, 51, also spoke at length about police brutality he said was pervasive and persistent in the years leading up to the riots.

"Blacks was not allowed to be black," Freeland said in response to questions from his attorney. "Blacks was not allowed to be human beings."

Freeland and Leon Wright, 54, have pleaded innocent to first- and second-degree murder charges and face up to life in prison. Jurors heard closing arguments Tuesday and were to begin deliberating Wednesday.

Wright declined to testify, but his grand jury testimony was read into the record. In it, he said he was sitting on his porch up to 60 yards away from the intersection where attackers fired at the armored police truck carrying Officer Henry Schaad, who was hit and died two weeks later.

The 1969 riots left two dead, dozens injured and entire blocks burned before 400 state police and National Guardsmen armed with rifles and tanks came to quell the violence. The long-dormant slaying cases were reopened in 1999 and arrests began in 2001.

Freeland rebutted the testimony of seven witnesses who had taken the stand and accused him of shooting at the police truck. The only witness who also accused Wright was his brother, Michael, in testimony that surprised even prosecutors.

Freeland said many of the witnesses were not on the crowded street corner when the late-night shooting happened.

When shots did ring out, "there was so much shooting from so many places, I was just trying to get out of there," Freeland said. He did not identify any of the shooters.

Freeland's attorney, Terry McGowan, told jurors that witnesses were routinely duped by investigators into signing false statements, then coerced by prosecutors into testifying.

Lead prosecutor William Graff defended his witnesses' credibility, saying that they told the same basic story, despite variations in detail and their fear of taking the stand to implicate their one-time neighbors.

Freeland said he had handled several guns that night _ "guns was being passed around like alcohol" _ but was not carrying one when the armored truck cruised through the intersection.

Officers routinely shot at blacks from that truck, Freeland testified. He also said rooftop police snipers shot into black neighborhoods and officers used dogs against blacks on city streets.

Graff asked Freeland about times when whites had been ambushed by blacks at the same intersection. "I cannot testify about something that happened to someone else that I had nothing to do with," Freeland replied.

The second killing of the riots occurred three days after Schaad was shot, when a black woman, Lillie Belle Allen, was gunned down as she and her family drove in a predominantly white neighborhood.

A jury in October convicted two white ex-gang members of second-degree murder in Allen's slaying and acquitted ex-mayor Charlie Robertson, who was accused of inciting whites to violence against blacks. Six other white men pleaded guilty to lesser charges, and the case of another man is pending.